Here on the blog last August, I wrote: In all my years of chasing whitetails across North America, I’ve noticed the tendency for the animals to move most in twilight is magnified during a new (dark) moon that overlaps the seeking phase of the rut, as it does this year. I went on to predict that the new moon week of November 2 through 6 would be five of the best days to hunt in 2024.

Not coincidentally, we planned our annual Virginia deer camp to start on November 2, in the middle of archery season and during the first week of muzzleloader. This is typically when what I call the “hard pre-rut” occurs in the Virginia Piedmont. Weeks earlier, bucks marked the woods with rubs, and now they open and work scrapes in a frenzy. While many bucks still remain secretive, cautious and largely nocturnal, others, fueled by a sudden bolt of testosterone, start prowling aimlessly, sometimes in daylight hours.

Would my prediction that the new moon this week would intensify the pre-rut in our area and put more bucks on their feet in shooting light, especially from sunup until 10:00 a.m., prove true?

Four of us climbed into stands the morning of November 3, and by sundown on November 5, we had collectively seen 19 different bucks. We’d all encountered young and middling bucks, and passed 130-class borderline shooters.

While we all had great action, we still didn’t have a buck on the ground come November 6. The moon was waxing toward first-quarter, its illumination increasing noticeably. Today would be make or break for my theory that November 6 would be one of the best days of the year to hunt.

At 10:02 a.m. my friend Jack’s muzzleloader boomed. Sitting in a stand aways up the mountain, I heard his deer churn a couple hundred yards my way and crash down. I quit my stand and hiked down to find Jack standing with a beautiful 4-year-old 10-point. “Saw him walking nose down on a doe trail 200 yards away,” said my buddy. “Grunted twice, and here he came, 50-yard shot.”

Deer movement was light later that afternoon where I hunted, but when I rolled into camp after dark, I saw a crowd gathered around Davis’ truck bed, hollering and hooping. I joined the fun and gawked at my buddy’s beast—a 6-year-old 10-point with kickers and splits that would score in the 150s. “Stepped out in the plot with five minutes of shooting light left,” he said.

What a great camp, with major lessons. Check the calendar, and in year when the new moon overlaps the hard pre-rut the first week of November, take off work and hunt. Anticipate buck movement to be best in the mornings; get on stand early and stick it out until at least 10:00 a.m. And hunt the afternoons till dark of course. Whitetails are crepuscular animals, and it’s in their DNA to move at dusk anytime of the season, regardless of moon phase or weather. You might shoot your buck in the morning or at last light, you never know. You gotta be there.

As for weather, it was great for the first three days of our Virginia camp, clear and high pressure, with lows in the mid-30s and highs around 50 degrees. But on November 6, it warmed overnight to a humid low of 50 and zoomed to an afternoon high of 78. On the “worst” weather day of the hunt, we killed two fantastic old bucks. When you get lucky and time your hunt days just right, the power of the rut will put bucks on their feet for a few magical days, no matter the temperature or the weather.